Bust The Mirror
by Random One-Shot
Summary: Crimson Butterfly - They had promised to always be together, but in the end she had to fight alone.
1. Click

_Fatal Frame belongs to Tecmo. This should be obvious._

* * *

Bust The Mirror

_They promised to always stay together, but in the end she had to fight alone. _

* * *

A mansion that could have been at home in something written by Edgar Allen Poe, enough trick doors and secret passageways to satisfy James Bond, priests who were trained throughout their families' histories in a ritual of human sacrifice, diaries leftover from the twins who had murdered their brothers or sisters, magic glowing butterflies, and a nasty habit of abducting travelers for midnight murder rituals.

From everything Mio could tell, All Gods Village had been an ugly place even _before_ Sae died, went fucknuts insane and had a happy killing spree.

However, the key part of that thought was the _before_ bit; as in, before it was populated by see-through, insubstantial (except when they grabbed her, couldn't forget that), homicidal ghosts.

A village with traps, locked doors and no light was still a step up from a village with traps, locked doors, no light and dead people. As she ripped open the doors that Mayu had gone through –

_- had to be this way there is no other door and sae helped me she wants me to come – _

- and saw the first of the mourners swing a wispy head in her direction, Mio decided she could do without the ghosts, thank you very much.

The film from her fight with the ceremony master –

_- it was her _father –

- was type-61 and there was still plenty of it left. Mio had no idea how the Camera Obscura worked, why there was film for it scattered all around the village, or how the damn thing had survived all the tumbling she had gone through in the night, but she _did_ have an idea of how quickly she could fight off a mourner with something better than type-14.

The camera hanging from the strap around her neck was still warm from her fight in the rope temple. She lifted it to her eye, aimed through the glass and pressed the button. There was an almost painful flash of stabbing white light, a _thrum_ of heat that vibrated through the entire camera (and Mio wasn't sure what _that_ was. No camera she'd ever used had done that before, but then, no camera she'd ever used had ever hurt a ghost before either), and then the ghost was staggering back with a low, sad cry that sent Mio's hair up along her neck.

She'd heard that noise more times than she could remember in a night that stretched back behind her like the ocean, but it still scared her. It scared her white.

The ring in the viewfinder flashed red and Mio clicked the shutter button again, choosing her moment like a veteran sniper. Click flash whirl click flash whirl, and then the mourner was falling to the ground, becoming more foggy and less there even as Mio ran past it, down the stairs and into the cavern tunnel that ran beneath All Gods Village. She didn't bother looking at the picture that had fluttered to the ground after she had preformed her third shot. She knew by now what she would see – a triple image of the mourner, three shuttered moments chained together and crammed into one picture.

Mio ran through the tunnel, feeling strangely light as she did. There was a word for it, she knew, when your body was so past the point of feeling from stress and weariness that you no longer noticed little things like hunger or pain. There was a word for it, but she could not remember it and it didn't really matter, not with something cold and dead and _not kind_ lunging at her from behind, its cold, airy fingers stroking her back, pushing _through_ her back and Mio could _feel it touching her heart_.

For a moment Mio forgot Mayu, forgot the camera hanging around her neck, forgot everything but the need to _run_, and she screamed, bursting forward with a show of speed that she did not know she the adrenaline reserves left to create. Even then, even with her scream still cutting the air with its sharpness –

_- oh god i sound like a police whistle i didn't know i could scream like that -_

- Mio could still hear the mourner's frustrated moaning, growling, _snarling_ as it groped along behind, trying to reach the warmth it had felt under its fingers only a moment earlier. The pain that came from their touch, from the touch of what was dead, was like frostbite. Mio could still feel her heart hammering away at triple overtime, but it _hurt_. It was as though the organ had been left in a freezer for several hours before being unceremoniously shoved back into her body. It would pass, she knew it would, just as soon as a few minutes went by.

And if it were any other time that night, if it were any other place in the village, she might have stopped to rest and wait for that to happen.

Not there.

Not then.

There were two mourners waiting for her in the next chamber, one on each side. She would have run right through them, but she had heard the low moaning of a third from the stairs ahead of her and she did not want to take the chance of being trapped between the three if she wasn't fast enough.

The camera was raised and Mio had the first one in her sights, a core shot in perfect line with its head. She watched the meter around the target circle slowly fill, far too slowly for her liking, and snapped off a picture when it was three-quarters full. There was the thrum, the heat, and the feeling of _power_ that blasted loose from the camera (a goddamned _camera) _her sweaty, dirty hands. The mourner staggered back, falling halfway through the cave wall. She knew what it would do next, knew that she had two seconds, maybe, before it came at her swinging, and she quickly turned to the next one –

- and found it two steps away from her, raising its right arm for a swipe at her face. The air was chilled with its presence and it gave off a vibe, a feeling, an _aura_ –

_- i will never make fun of metaphysical phrases again, i swear – _

- of the grave.

Mio, in that state of hyper awareness that comes only when you realize you are about to die, _die_, did not charge a shot, did not line it up with the ghost's core. She had the ghost in her frame of vision and that was enough for the Zero lens she had found in the Tachibana house to turn the ghost into a floating mass of nothing.

And then she was backing up even as she turned, the first mourner already coming at her, swinging its horrible arms at her and sending waves of deadly frigid air against her body with each pass. She backed into the tunnel she had come from, keeping the monster in her sights and letting the camera charge, charge, charge, charge –

_- hurry up!_ –

- and pushed the shutter button, sending a wave of light and power and heat against the mourner and ending it. Blue light (the closest thing to ghostly remains, she guessed) gathered up where it had been and surged toward her camera. It no longer frightened her, not now that she knew each bit of blue filled up the little meter that would let her know when it was safe to use the Zero lens again.

Mio moved forward and started down the stairs, sighting the lone mourner that had indeed been waiting for her in the camera's lens and clicking the shutter button down. Once click whirl flash twice click whirl flash thrice click whirl flash and then she was moving down the cleared stairs. Even though she wanted to run, to find Mayu, to _leave this hell,_ Mio made herself walk slowly. The steps were cave rock, and that meant old, uneven and hard. She wouldn't be anything but dead if she slipped and broke her leg.

She stepped off the last of the steps and found herself on level ground. The cave stretched on unendingly in front of her –

_- mayu could not have made it ahead of me not this far she fucking _limps_ she can't run where is she how – _

- but Mio did not care, was beyond caring at that point. Her twin was somewhere up ahead and she. Was. Going. To. Find. Mayu.

Her black shoes (and why the hell had she worn them to a forest outing? Tennis shoes would have been so much better) clacked noisily on the stone floor and made her jumpy at the thought of more mourners rushing out at her from the shadows. The only noises they ever made were the moaning sounds and once those were gone, they could be a step behind her and she would not know until they struck.

Mio had thought it before, several times in fact, but it bore repeating.

- _i hate this place -_

The flashlight was not helping much. It gave her just enough light to see five feet ahead of her and then it just _stopped_, like something was sucking up the extra brightness. It had scared her before, but as with so many other things she had just accepted it because there were more frightening things.

"_Yae?"_

Like that.

* * *

I'm not Yae, she wanted to say.

My name is Mio, not Yae. I'm fourteen years old, not fifteen like Yae was when she lived here. I'm alive, not dead like Yae must be by now. I'm not going to leave my sister to die, like Yae did. I don't wear kimonos or yukatas, like Yae did. My father never wanted me to kill my sister, like Yae's did. I never grew up in a mansion, like Yae did. I never had a friend named Itsuki who died in misery, like Yae did. I never had to wonder if I was going to be white-haired and insane before I was twenty, like Yae almost certainly did.

But if there was one thing Mio had learned more than what film to use for what ghost, more than what key to use for what lock and more than what clue led to what puzzle, it was that Sae saw what Sae wanted to see and Sae wanted her sister and so Mio was her sister now, and that was that.

_

* * *

_

- bitch –

* * *

"_You've finally come for me." _

The words were faint and far away. They were coming from ahead, down the path Mio was taking (running). They were quiet, but carried so very well somehow. This was not Sae the monster, the bloodstained ghoul who stood in carnage of her own home's hall and laughed at her people's massacre. This was Sae the girl, who had never doubted that her sister would come back for her, that she would not be abandoned, that Yae would keep her promise.

Never doubted until the priests led her through the gate and down the stairs, and she wondered if, maybe, Yae _was not coming back_.

"_You've finally come…."_

She sounded so relaxed.

"_We can be… one…._"

Mio kept running, trying hard not to cry because she wanted Mayu _now_, and she did not want to keep going down the path that led to something so obscene that the people who lived above it dared not speak its name. That place where Azami and Akane had gone together and then her hands had gone around her sister's neck –

_- 'her neck felt so warm and alive' – _

_- 'why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill?' – _

- and what came out of that place was not a little girl anymore. It was something broken and mewling, something that Mio had shrunk away from when she had first put the blue crystal into the radio and heard that pathetic little voice from a girl long dead coming out in static bursts.

What she had not acknowledged then, she was beginning to now. The path was making her know it, see it, fear it and Mio knew that -

_- i was afraid because what if that is me before this night ends – _

- something horrible was waiting up ahead. It had been waiting for her and Mayu for years. Maybe not them in particular, any twins would likely do, but it had them now and she really did not see it letting them go without a fight. Whatever that XX was, it had ruined an entire village in one night and swallowed up anyone who wandered into it since.

"_I knew you would come for me." _

_- I DID NOT COME FOR YOU! –_

The thought surprised Mio with its intensity, the fierce rush of _loathing_ that filled her at Sae's voice. On a conscious level, with all the documents and crystals she had found, Mio knew that something else came out of the caves with Sae and the Kusabi, something that turned them both from victims into monsters, but she did not care. She did not care because it was Sae's form that chased her through that tunnel, it was the Kusabi who scared her senseless in the great hall (she could not move for a full four and a half seconds, just staring at the screaming face with all the other screaming faces surrounding it and then the faint thought of, _I just wet myself_), but more than that she did not care because the dairy entries hinted at what the last piece of fluorite confirmed.

Sae was a goddamned lunatic.

"_I kept waiting and waiting…." _

There was more light now, light from more than her flashlight. It flickered. Fire?

_"Let's continue the ritual…."_

_- no _–

"_Two shrine maidens… become as one…." _

_- i won't do it won't kill mayu no – _

And that was the last thought Mio had for a few seconds as she turned a corner in the cave and just simply _stared_.

There was a chamber bigger than the great hall of the Kurosawa house, maybe bigger then the entire Kurosawa house itself. There were thousands upon thousands of candles piled to the sides and in the center. There was a painted or tiled design at the center of the floor. There was a torii gate straight across from her, with a black opening in its center. There were two glowing girls in the center of the room, one hugging the other.

Except….

Except her hands were….

Mio dimly realized that she had thrown up slightly, her throat stinging with the acid gargling against it.

"_Killllll meeee…."_

The little girl was strangling her sister.

"_Don't killll meeee…." _

She thought that maybe it was the Kiryu twins. It was likely just personal prejudice, as one of them had spent the better part of three hours trying to murder her. Still, the twins bore a definite resemblance to the longhaired, solemn little girls that Mio had photographed in the rotting Kiryu house. Except this was definitely not a possessed doll that she was staring at. Echoes (that was what she called them, the ghosts that were not. They were nearly everywhere, littered all over the village and a single snapshot of type-7 took care of them. They weren't the violent spirits that hunted her, they were just echoes of people that had been alive once) of two little girls had stayed in this chamber. They had stayed for decades, maybe centuries. They had stayed and now Mio was watching what they had stayed to do, over and over again, for a ritual that had been completed, but would not let them go.

"_Killllll meeee…."_

"_Don't killll meeee…."_

All Gods Village ate its children.

Mio raised the Camera Obscura and dispelled the remnants.

The photo that slid out of the slot on the camera's side brushed her fingers as it fell and she caught it. In it, the two girls still sat on the cold, hard floor. One of them choked the other. The second one did not raise a hand against the other. How could she? It was her twin. By the village's belief, striking her twin was to strike herself. How could you fight back when your executioner was your other half?

Maybe, Mio thought quietly, that was why the ritual had always gone on so smoothly before. No one ever tried to do more than run away.

Run.

Itsuki's voice came back to her.

_- "you have to get out of the village." -_

Letting the photo float to the floor, Mio moved around the center mound of candles and headed for the torii gate. If Mayu was not here, then she had to be there. And maybe, no, _definitely_ Sae too, but Mio would deal with whatever came when it would. She was too drained to do anything else.

The flashlight in her hand illuminated the narrow, old steps leading down the tunnel. Mio started down them, her free hand against the cave wall for balance. Her hands were scraped, cut, bruised and filthy, and the hysterical thought came to her that her mother was going to have a field day with their next manicure session, but Mio stamped it down before she could let out the Sae-esque giggle that wanted to come out.

_Ting._

The air chilled and _twisted_ and Mio knew what was coming, but it still felt weird when –

_- Sae stepped down the stairs, the priests in front and behind of her. _

"Sae…?"

_She was still alive. Not bloodstained or insane. When was this?_

_Priests chanting, moving with her, forcing her to keep moving. Something waited in the room ahead; something hungry and – Mio could feel it, somehow – nearly free. _

_There was only one twin. They would try it anyway. _

_She stepped down the stairs, the chiming of a bell somewhere in the air above the clanging of the priests' staffs. The altar awaited._

_Mio thought, in a very distant way, that this could be taken for a wedding ceremony. The solemn bride in white, the escort to the altar, the joining of two souls for all eternity. Except that this was a cave a hundred feet below the ground, only westerners used white for weddings and the one Sae was supposed to spend eternity with _was not there.

_The frayed, broken red cord brushed the earth._

_Sae stopped – _

_- and Mio _knew_ what Sae was thinking as sure as if she had said it out loud – _

_- 'we have to wait for yae.' – _

_- and then a priest pushed her forward. _

_A mourner waited at the altar and Mio recognized the picture with a heart stopping clarity as the one she had seen when she had touched Mayu in the old tree. _

"_Forever…." _

_The world tilted, twisted, went static and loud and gray and then Sae was hanging - dead, limp meat - from a noose hung from the torii gate. There were priests crowding in front of her, watching her hang – _

_- oh god they stood by while she choked and kicked, Mio thinks – _

_- and then two mourners were throwing the empty shell of what had been Sae into the waiting pit. Her arms and legs flew up as her body plummeted and the red cord was the only bit of color in the world. It danced in the wind as Sae's body fell, her white kimono and red cord slowly fading from view, swallowed by the hungry abyss._

"_I'll wait forever…."_

_Mio gasped as the earth rocked, no, _heaved_, in the way that a sick person does before they vomit. She stumbled and managed to grab the wall as the vision continued. _

_A brief flash and disorienting whirl of static, and then there were priests rushing up the steps past Mio, _through_ Mio, and it took a moment for her to realize that she felt nothing when they did. They were not ghosts, just echoes. _

_From far below, where Mio could still see what was happening even while her eyes showed her that her hands were pressed up against the cave wall hard enough to turn them white, there were screams. The words were varied; "Repentance!" "The malice is coming!" "We must flee the village!" _

_They all meant the same thing. _

_The cage was open. _

_Mio saw the priest nearest the pit tear the veil from his face and – _

_- is that mr. kurosawa? Mio wonders – _

_- saw his face morph into a grotesque parody of terror that ordinarily would have sent her into peals of laughter, except that this _was not funny _and she knew what he was seeing even before the vision changed, even before it went from gray and black and white and static to a clarity that made her head hurt. _

_It was a vision and Mio knew it. It was like a broken record repeating something over and over again. God knew she had had enough of them lately to be an expert. There was nothing there that could hurt her._

_It did not stop her from screaming loud enough to make her throat hurt when the vision gave her an image cast in a bloody ambient light of Sae Kurosawa, who had been strangled and dumped into the abyss moments earlier, sitting demurely on the altar where her body had lain not a minute before. _

_It lasted only half a moment. _

_But it was enough for Mio to see the black rope mark around her neck, to see the dark shadows under her eyes, to see the unhinged look on her face, to see that it. Was. Not. Just Sae Kurosawa who sat sweetly on that altar, to see that something had settled inside of her, and to see that what was about to happen next was something she did not want to see at all. _

_Something exploded out of the abyss with the force of a million cannons. Her other-sight grew exponentially and Mio could suddenly see the entire village, every bit of it, and she could see the black cloud that had erupted from Misono hill cover all of it in less time than it took for her to count to five. _

_And somewhere in that blackness, she could hear laughing – _

- no, not laughing. If that were laughing, she would eat her shoes.

It was screaming and she had heard it before.

The feeling of being too light for her own body was back in full force and Mio nearly flew from the stairway as the first bit of fog touched the bottom step. Skipping every other rise, Mio was back in the sacrificial altar room in five leaps. She darted forward and got seven strides in before she dug her heels into the cave floor and spun around, yanking open the back of the Camera Obscura.

_- my _sister _is down that way -_

The first time she had seen the thing, she had had no idea what it was and no care for it. She had just run away as fast as she could the moment she found her legs again, and when she was on the second floor of the Kurosawa house, in the hallway outside the flickering room, she had finally stopped running, collapsed to her knees and spent a good three minutes crying.

Now she knew what it was, knew who it had been, knew what it could do, and she still had no care for any of it (except maybe that last, 'what it could do' part). Seijiro Makabe was dead and gone, and that thing floating up the stairwell was not him. That was the thing that had slaughtered at least half of All God's Village, maybe more if Sae had been feeling lazy. That was the thing that had cornered Masumi Makimura in a closet and savaged him to death. That was the thing that was currently standing between herself and Mayu. That was the thing that was coming to kill her and Mio was not going to let that happen.

Mio yanked out the type-61 film that was still loaded into her camera –

_- take no chances, not with this one _–

- and, for the first time, inserted a cartridge of type-91. She had no idea how powerful it was, but, after seeing the difference between type-7 and type 14, and then later type-14 and type-61, she had a pretty good feeling that the Kusabi would not like it.

The fog was roiling out of the torii gate now and the wailing had reached its pitch. From the gray mass reached a skeletal hand and arm, blindly reaching through the air for something (or someone) to grab hold of. The tattered robes hung loosely on the emaciated frame and the shock of floating white hair waved in a wind that Mio did not feel. Faces (souls of the ones it had killed, maybe) hung in the air around it, adding their own wails to the chorus. And somehow most horrible of all, the two empty eye sockets glared blindly at Mio as the Kusabi began making its way toward her.

Mio could still feel her panties sticking to her crotch at the point where her brief flood of urine had stained them the first time she had seen the Kusabi. Watching the monster come at her again, she was suddenly very aware that she had not gone to the bathroom for at least seven hours.

But more than that, more than the fear, the pain, the exhaustion, Mio could still remember that Mayu was waiting somewhere in the chamber below.

Mayu, who she had promised to always stay with after the time when she had not stayed, had run on ahead, and Mayu had paid the price for it.

Mayu, who was _still_ paying the price for it with every step she took.

Mayu, who was relying on Mio for everything.

Because she was her sister.

_- "are you leaving me again?" –_

Mio raised the camera and sighted the Kusabi.

_- I am not yae – _

Click.


	2. Whirl

_Fatal Frame belongs to Tecmo. This should be obvious._

* * *

Bust The Mirror

_They promised to always stay together, but in the end she had to fight alone. _

* * *

Click.

Whirl.

Flash.

The Kusabi halted.

Mio watched through her viewfinder as it seemed to shudder, then fade. Its right arm rose into the air, begging for help, except that Mio didn't think the Kusabi knew how to beg. It stopped floating, falling to its knees on the cold rock floor of the sacrificial altar. The wailing was starting to fade. The faces that surrounded it (were they the people it had killed?) disappeared first. They blew away without wind. The Kusabi itself lingered for a few more moments and Mio watched, her grip still white-knuckled on the Camera Obscura, as it slowly fell and faded at the same time. It was still making that sound –

- except that now that the faces were gone, it was just one voice, just one wail, and Mio thought it wasn't quite so _terrifying_ as it was _sad_, like it was crying –

- but the noise left with it. Five seconds after her final shot of type-91 film, Mio was alone in the room again.

The camera was lowered and Mio, somewhat belatedly, realized that she _really_ needed to breathe.

_- gone it's gone it's gone really gone this time_ –

Except it wasn't, was it? The Kiryu twins, the villagers, the priests, the people in the dark, the drowned woman, the broken neck woman, the fallen woman, and all the others, _they had all come back._ It was like All Gods Village was a big piece of clockwork and the camera was just sticking bits of wood in the gears. It jammed them up for a while, but then they started rolling again, reliving a single night of Hell over and over again.

_- grab mayu GET OUT_ –

A flash of scarlet that glowed.

Mio looked up from the ground where the Kusabi had vanished (how long had she been staring?) and was not at all surprised to see a single crimson butterfly floating at the torii gate that led down. It was hovering at the red arch, waiting for her.

Mio started toward it, feeling every ache in her body. The adrenaline from her fight was wearing off and going to sleep on the cave floor was sounding very tempting, but for Mayu….

Mio limped through the torii gate, heading down the stairs a second time. No vision of the past assailed her this time. Her only troubles were the stairs themselves, old and dangerous as they were. She took them slowly, one at a time.

There was another passageway beyond them, but before she took it Mio's light gave her a glimpse of what she was passing under. There were three red torii gates once she stepped off the stairs. Three big, red, heavy, sturdy torii gates that had been _ripped apart_ at the top. Only the depth of the side posts kept them from collapsing altogether.

_- they were fine in the vision _–

Mio passed under them, stepping lightly. She didn't think they would collapse just because of her, but it was better to be safe than sorry. She moved through the gates, feeling a rather intense bout of relief when she was done. Relief turned to curiosity when her light caught a bit of yellow in the short corridor she traveled down.

Mio had grown accustomed to finding diaries, notes, and maps during her night. The black bag that had belonged to Miyako Sudo was stuffed full of them and it looked like it was going to be stuffed even fuller. Mio knelt down in the corridor and picked up the ancient piece of rice paper. The characters were fading and the writing was rather sloppy, but she could still read it by the flashlight.

_Yae,_

_You came for me after all._

_Please hurry._

_I'm right below you. _

_I know you might not make it in time, but I'll wait for you until the very end. _

_- Sae_

Mio read the words, her mind carrying her somewhere far away.

How long had the note been there?

How long had Sae been waiting?

Waiting and waiting and waiting?

A vision of years stretched out in Mio's mind. An endless night looping over and over again each second of ever day of every year since it began always the same, never changing or ending, and each new person swallowed up by the village was just added to it.

For how long?

Oh God, _why_? Why hadn't the families just packed up and moved away from the horrible place they had built their village upon? Why had they fed their children to it, knowing that it would never end and each new death was just an appeasement?

Mio didn't know why, didn't want to know why. That kind of stagnation, staying the course because it was TRADITION and because it was THE ONLY THING WE KNOW, was worse than death and she wondered, maybe, if the curse on the village was just the evil taking it to the next step.

_- but who cares you aren't dead_ –

The note was shoved into the black bag around Mio's shoulders.

_- grab mayu and run _–

There was another staircase, another set of weathered steps that Mio had to hobble down. The ground was old and Mio could feel the tired age of it. Maybe it wanted the nightmare to stop as well, so it didn't have to feel the feet of so many ghosts pounding against it.

There were more torii gates, more ancient posts that had been shredded asunder by a force stronger and older than they.

There was more light at the bottom of the steps, coming from further away. It was moonlight, but they were underground, so how…?

There was Mayu in front of a flat rock.

Mio stopped.

She didn't stop because of the path or because of the weariness in her limbs or because of the piece of rayed, rotting rope that hung from the torii gate in front of her –

- and there was a clicking sound in her head as pieces rushed together to form the words, _that was where Sae was hung_ –

- or because of simple relief at seeing her sister.

Mio stopped because it had come back again; that pervading sense of _wrongness_, that she was seeing something slightly off kilter and it was very important, so pay attention. There was something terribly offensive about the way Mayu was standing docilely in front of the rock –

_- altar_ –

- with her head down and her hair hanging in front of her face. There was something wrong with it all because this was_ not _how you should react when your sister has come down to find you in a_ fucking haunted cave_.

"I kept waiting."

And why was her voice so flat dead wrong not her sister's?

"In a dark, dark place."

And why was she just standing there, not moving, not coming to Mio where she belonged?

The moonlight behind Mayu landed perfectly on the altar behind her and Mio had another puzzle-piece-falling-into-place moment when she realized that they were under Misono hill, beneath that pit in the ground -

_- there was a cloud of scarlet fluttering up around Mayu and when she turned around again, Mio looked at her and was afraid and did not know why. _

"_The Lost Village." _

_Mio could hear the capitals on all the words – _

- where all those butterflies had come from when they first arrived.

Mio took a half step forward, knowing that there was something dreadfully wrong, not knowing what to do.

The space between them was only fifteen steps, at most, but Mio suddenly felt apart from Mayu.

Mayu was looking at her now, Mio realized with a start. When had she lifted her head? Did it matter? No. Her sister was staring at her (expectantly?) and waiting for something.

_- mayu what is – _

Mio took a step forward.

And another.

And another.

And Mayu spoke.

"Shall we begin?"

Another step.

Another.

And another.

And –

- _static_ -

_- "mio." – _

"Yae."

The world went gray and dim and there suddenly priests all around them and Mio oddly did not feel like moving anymore.

"We were born together."

The priests could have been statues, but Mio could feel their ageless stares drilling against her skin.

"But we have to live and die separately."

"I knew this," Mayu said, and her face was turning down again, looking sad again, and Mio thought that, maybe, whatever was wrong had lifted just a bit and some bit of Mayu had come back.

"I knew."

And then Mio was moving again, nothing in her heart except to comfort her sister –

- and there was something insidiously _wrong _about that, but Mio couldn't follow that thought because _Mayu_ was there and _Mayu_ was the only thing that mattered.

"We'll be together," Mio promised. "We _will_."

_- of course we will_, Mio thought. Then, _wait why am I thinking this what – _

Mayu tilted her head back and now Mio was close enough to see the delicate blue veins in Mayu's exposed neck and she was _staring_ at that exposed neck, feeling her fingers twitching to –

_- what _–

"We can't be together forever," Mayu said sadly.

Clang!

The priests slammed their staffs against the ground and in the sharp surprise of hearing them move Mio's mind was suddenly clear and she knew that there was something _terribly wrong_ about her and Mayu and all of this, but –

- and then the moment was gone and Mayu was all that mattered.

Mayu was lying back onto the altar and Mio moved with her, the two them as one and the feeling in Mio's mind that was a whisper became a roar that _something was wrong stopstopstopstopstop_, but she couldn't think and Mayu –

- "But…" –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- Mayu was so warm beneath her, so alive –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- "With this…" –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- this was how it was meant to be, just the two of them –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- "We can become one." –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- together _forever_ and her hands were moving up to –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- "So it's all right." –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- Mayu's neck and her face was leaning down like she and Mayu were about to share a secret and Mayu whispered –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- "Kill me." –

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! -

- and her hands were squeezing.

- Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! –

And the priests were banging their staffs and the sound of chimes filled the air and I've been waiting since I was born to feel your hands around my neck and her sister was choking beneath her and there was drool pooling in Mayu's mouth and we'll always be together right and her knees were hurting from the rock and there was light from above and Mio stop it and Akane felt this too right and they'd never be apart again and you finally came for me and she wanted out and was this real and Mio stop it now and they were born for this purpose and there was no escape now stop it Mio and please kill me and Mayu wait Mayu and no matter what happens I'll forgive you and stop saying that and don't leave me behind and Mio you have to wake up and don't leave me again and you must escape and _Mio, please wake up_ and her head hurt and wasn't it almost over by now and there was gems everywhere and the Kusabi had too much anger in it and Sae was just lonely and _Mio! Mio! Mio!_ And what was that racket it made it hard to think, to focus on what had to be done and there was giggling from somewhere and Miyako was crying and the doll was laughing and _Mio, help me! _and why wasn't it done and how long could her sister survive without air before she died and where was the butterfly and why was it so hard to move and _MIO I'M MELTING HELP ME _and then there was release as the body beneath her gave one last huge convulsing heap and then she was sliding off the corpse and the mourners were swinging her dead sister's body into the Hellish Abyss and there was a butterfly coming toward her and Mio smiled because now they'd be together fore -

_- MIOWAKEUPNOW! – _

_- mayu? –_

Whirl.


	3. Flash

_Fatal Frame belongs to Tecmo. This should be obvious._

* * *

Bust The Mirror

_They promised to always stay together, but in the end she had to fight alone. _

* * *

The world spun and blurred and roared.

The static that had tinged Mio's perceptions left as the vision (and that had been all, really, just a vision) ended with Mayu's scream. How her sister had done it Mio didn't know or care, but she was back in control (as much as she had ever been) and she knew what to do. She finally knew what was wrong.

It was just the two of them in the Hellish Abyss again, her and the one in front of her. Mio fumbled for the Camera Obscura as several things connected in her mind.

It had been a lie. All of it, every bit of that vision had been a lie, a filthy, ugly, horrible lie, the same lie that was fed to every pair of twins that had ever walked in All Gods Village. You will live and die separately. You won't be together forever. But you can be. Just do this one thing and you can be together forever. But it was a _lie_ because Mio knew that they never came together, never saw each other again. Dead was dead, and only one half was dead and that half was sealed away forever, _separated in half forever_, to guard the mouth of a pit and the twins were never reunited and if she had killed Mayu she wouldn't have smiled, she would have run screaming after that butterfly forever and ever, chasing it forever until she had caught it or died trying.

_And…._

Sae was still around, somehow. Maybe she was directing the malice or the malice was directing her, but Sae tinged everything it touched and warped it to her desires. The evil that had erupted didn't want to be sealed again, even if it was just a temporary thing, but Sae wanted Yae, Sae wanted Yae to come back, Sae wanted to stay with Yae forever, Sae wanted Yae to kill her, and so Sae would have her ritual and the darkness would just have to put up with being locked away for another ten years or so while Sae sat happily in the blackness.

_And…._

All God's Village was a pit and Mio would do a dance of joy when the dam was built and the whole stupid area was flooded. She really would.

_And…._

So many people, so many children, had been sacrificed (murdered), not for the sake of the village, but for the sake of the villagers who were too stubborn to move away, to build their homes somewhere else because better someone die so that they could live here then everyone suffer so that someone could live. Stupid people.

_And…._

Mio knew Sae had been waiting for a long time. Waiting in the abyss. Waiting in the mansion. Waiting in the village. And waiting by the river, in that place where she and Yae had made that promise. In that place Sae had written in her diary that she would stay around as a butterfly, waiting for the day when Yae came back. In that place Mio and Mayu had stopped to rest by. In that place where Mayu had been led away from her by a flutter of scarlet.

_And…._

She had seen nothing odd about Mayu when she had looked at her through the camera's lens in the Osaka house, in the Kurosawa house, in the Tachibana house, in the old tree. She had seen nothing but Mayu.

_And…._

She remembered quite clearly the terror she had felt in the tunnel beneath the Kiryu house and the Tachibana house. Of being caged in the rock walls while a demon in blood-stained white had laughed at her imminent death and closed in with hungry eyes and cruel hands. She remembered feeling the sheer and simple disbelief of the situation when she looked through the camera's viewfinder and saw _nothing_. She saw nothing even as she heard the screaming laughter of Sae as she came closer and then the moment of clarity when the camera was lowered, Sae's face filled her vision and she knew, _I'm going to die now_.

_And…._

The twin who was born last was the elder in All Gods. The twin who was born last in Mio's time was the younger. Yae was older by All Gods decree. Mio was younger by modern decree. The elder was the Remaining.

_And…._

Sae had fallen from the mountain path as she chased after her sister, trying to get away. Except that she hadn't really wanted to get away, so was it really a slip?

_And…._

"Hurry up or I'll leave you behind!"

"Wait!"

And the giggles of childish maliciousness that was not real, because she loved her sister; she just loved to tease her as well.

And then the scream.

And the fear.

And the thought, _but I'm way clumsier than Mayu. Why didn't I slip too? _

_And…._

Mio knew everything and she knew what to do.

The camera was raised, the viewfinder lined up for a close core shot, and the face was coming toward her very quickly now as the target realized something was not going the way she had planned.

The feeling was explained. Mio knew why there was a sense of wrongness about her sister. Why she had been afraid when she looked at her through the window in the Kurosawa house cell. Why Mayu kept saying, "No matter what happens, I'll forgive you."

_- stop saying that_ –

Why Mayu kept forcing her to return to the village. Why she kept pleading, "Don't leave me."

_- as if I ever would – _

Why she felt, over and over again, like the person standing in front of her, staring at her, talking to her, walking with her, holding hands with her, helping her, hindering her, being with her was -

Click.

Whirl.

Flash.

- not her sister at all.

The light from the Zero lens was blinding and the noise from the blast was deafening, but she could still see the girl in front of her stagger back with the vague outline of kimono forming in the glare and she could still hear the ragged, inhuman shriek of pain and rage as something that had been fed and obeyed and unquestioned for hundreds of years found itself defied for the first time.

And then Mio was screaming with so much hate that her voice had become a Jurassic roar.

"_Get out of my sister, you __**bitch!!!**__" _

The thing that was not Mayu flinched back ever so slightly, not from the fury of a teenage girl, but from the one fury of the one who had hurt it. And then it stood straight, stood up in a way that Mayu never would (not with her knee) and it looked at Mio. There was a terrible, evil cunning in its face and it tilted its head and smiled so slightly, so small, more of a smirk, really –

- and then something was coming up from the ground around their feet. Thick, white fog that froze Mio's ankles and seemed to grab at her, weighing her legs down. It coiled around the thing that was not Mayu and covered it, hiding Mayu's body from view. Mio hissed, her grip on the camera tightening. There was something happening in the fog, some great change taking place and Mio remembered watching a butterfly come out of the cocoon when she was seven. The butterflies in the village were dead people and the mist cocoon wasn't an ordinary cocoon, which made Mio very grateful for the bizarre weapon in her hands.

And then the mist around her feet was bleeding away, falling back into the mouth of the abyss at the exact same time that the mist roiling around what was wearing her sister darkened like water with a spoonful of dye stirred in. White became red just as Sae burst out of the fog with a giggling scream and lunged for Mio.

The camera was raised, aimed and used.

Click.

Whirl.

Flash.

The type-91 film sent a surge of heat so intense that Mio was actually in pain for half a second as her fingertips informed her that they were burning. But it was worth it, was more than worth it, _was not on the same scale_ as hearing Sae howl in pain and seeing her fall back.

But then Mio was the one falling back as the ground heaved and bucked like a wild horse at a rodeo. The cavern shook and –

_- does hurting her hurt it too –_

- Mio fell to the ground, scraping off another seven square inches of her skin. Her eyes had left Sae for not even a second, but when she looked back up the ghost was gone. That was enough to make Mio scramble to her feet with more speed than grace and stagger forward, expecting to feel icy hands closing around her neck from behind.

She was half right. Sae was behind her, but not close enough to be a threat. The ghost was taking her time, walking toward Mio with that same dazed, gleeful expression on her face that she had worn as she calmly stalked Mio through the upper levels of the Tachibana house. Mio raised the Camera Obscura, waited for that obscuring crimson mist to part and then snapped off a photo, wincing a little as Sae's howl rang her eardrums. As the flash faded, so too did Sae, taking her red curtain of fog with her.

Mio knew what was coming even if she didn't know how she knew and so she braced herself as the earth quaked and rumbled. It sounded like the growling of something big and angry that had been locked in a very small cage. It sounded like a monster.

There was a monster coming from the left. Mio ran, swaying back and forth as her feet struggled to find purchase on the moving ground. Sae followed her, not at all bothered by the shifting floor –

_- bitch _–

- that gave Mio so much difficulty.

The rumbling stopped when Sae was all of six steps away and Mio raised the camera for another shot, lining the viewfinder up with Sae's smiling, happy, _ugly_ face and –

- click.

Even past the rumbling of the dying tremors and her own pounding heart, the click of the camera shuttering on an empty roll of film was deafening to Mio's ears.

Sae's hysterical giggle cut through the air like a knife and was it Mio's imagination or was the ghost moving faster?

Mio turned and ran, yanking open the back of the hot camera as she did and throwing the useless film container to the cavern floor. Had she bothered to look, she would have seen it steaming in the cold air. She reached into Miyako's bag for another cartridge of film, any film, and pulled out the first one she touched, slamming it into place, closing the camera and spinning around on one foot to face –

- nothing. Sae was gone again.

_- damndamndamndamndamndamn - _

"Are you – "

- behind -

" – leaving me – "

- turn around -

_- _**TURN AROUND NOW**_ -_

" – aga_aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHH!!!" _

For a moment, Mio honestly thought that the camera was going to explode.

She had felt the power, the heat, soar inside of it, press against the hard metal of the camera's frame and _stretch it_, like a baby kicking against its mother's womb. Then it passed, Sae was falling back and Mio stared with a stupefied expression at the Camera Obscura scalding her hands that had steam pouring out of its cracks.

_- zero film has to be _-

If she had known it was capable of _that_, Mio would never have bothered with type-91 to begin with.

Four shots left, Mio noted and then refocused on Sae.

She was already fading away. Mio turned away and searched the dark, rumbling cavern for the red fog and white kimono.

Sae emerged just in front of the rock altar that Mayu had (would have) died on. Mio moved in even as she sighted Sae within the camera's lens. The camera was burning her hands, destroying layer after layer of skin, but she ignored it as she ran forward and then the viewfinder's circle flashed red and Mio did not think –

- click –

- but to move her finger -

- whirl –

- down against the button -

- flash.

The camera bucked in her hands like a wild animal and she could feel the heat of it burning against her face as she kept her eye to the viewfinder and moved in, following Sae's movements with the mastery that the long night had given her. The second flash of light, the second buzzer from the camera, and Mio pressed the button down _again_, feeling the surge of _forcepowerheat_ down to her bones.

Sae _shrieked _–

- and there was an echo in that shriek, a faint call of "Mio, my leg hurts", but it was twisted with the scream, melded with it, melting with it, so Mio couldn't tell where Mayu was beginning and Sae was ending -

- and Mio pressed it down a third time and -

_- that's it I've busted the damn thing bye bye camera and thanks for the memories _–

- could not keep her grip on the camera any more. It was literally _smoking_ and she could smell something burning, plastic or metal or something, but it stung her nose. It doesn't matter, she thought.

_- please god don't let it matter now three chained shots from type-0 please let her die please _–

She did not stop to think about the impossibility of that hope.

Sae was wailing and fading and falling. She disappeared and Mio turned on her heel, the melting Camera Obscura dangling from the cord around her neck. She could feel the horrible heat of it through her shirt. It hurt, but it didn't matter, not compared to the fact that Sae might not be gone, she only had one shot left, the camera might be ruined, there –

"Mio."

"_Yae_."

She turned around there was SaeMayuSomething standing at the edge of the abyss, of that hellish abyss.

SheIt looked so sad, so lost, so broken, so lonely that for just a second Mio stopped. There was a look in the dark eyes that was not quite sadness, was not quite hunger, was not quite desperation. It was a look of unending hope that dwindled and bled and weakened and failed and cut, but did not die, _could not die_, no matter how much the girl (the thing) wanted it to, no matter how much better off she (it) (everyone) would be if it was just accepted:

_Yae had left Sae to die and she was not coming back_.

"We always used to promise each other…."

The same words, spoken over and over again. By her. By her sister. By every twin who had ever walked the world.

"…that we would stay together."

It was Mayu and it was Sae and it was Mutsuki and it was Azami and it was every twin who had ever feared being alone, being separated; it was every twin who had been lied to, who had been told that death was a reunion, that they could save the village and be with their other half; it was every child who had felt the hands of their most beloved person in the entire world wrap around their neck and take their life from them; it was every victim who had been dropped into a cold, hungry mouth and locked away within it to act as a barrier to keep in something unspeakable; it was every lonely soul who just wanted to be whole again and had always been denied by their neighbors, by their priests, by their family, by something without a name.

But Mio had seen the truth of it all, and she knew that she and Mayu would not always be together.

They would go to college and they would graduate and they would grow up. They would discover boys and maybe they would get married. They would have children and they would have husbands and they would have homes that were away from each other. They would write letters every week and make phone calls every day. They would slowly find that they could survive being away from one another. The connection would fade, though the love would remain. They would never be one.

And as she grabbed the camera, its heat sending white hot flashes of fire through her blistering hands, Mio knew she could live with that. It would hurt and she would cry long, agonizing hours over it, but she could live with it. She _would_ live with it, because it would mean that Mayu was there to live it with her. It would mean that Mayu was only a phone call, a train ride, a plane ticket away. It would mean the wonderful news of saying or hearing, "You're going to be an aunt." It would mean having or being a shoulder to cry on when the husband was away or the children were too young to understand. It would mean having her twin, even if they grew apart, even if they lived and died separately. Even then, she would still have Mayu wherever or whomever or however she was.

Even then.

Mio raised the Camera Obscura, lined up her shot and pushed the shutter button down.

There was, unsurprisingly, a loud, explosive _crack! _from the camera itself. It smashed into Mio's face from the force of the explosion and she dropped it, her right eye smarting and watering horribly. The camera dragged at her neck for a moment and then she was throwing the strap away from her, hearing the camera clatter against the rock floor, finally ruined after all she had put it through during the night.

But mostly, she heard Sae.

There was a wail that rose and fell ten times in a second, oscillating from a girl in pain to a monster in rage. Mio's good eye saw the flash that slammed Sae back, sending her flying down into the abyss and she saw the second form that was suddenly visible. The small, girlish figure in a dark red dress that was stumbling back towards the lip of the pit.

Reason fled.

"_Mayu!!!"_ Mio shrieked and lunged.

Fourteen years of having a living shadow flashed through Mio's mind. Following that came a premonition of what it would be like to go fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years without that. Without Mayu to wait for, to watch for, to protect. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without Mayu. Without -

- Mio caught her sister's wrist.

* * *

**_End_**

* * *

Seriously folks, that's it.


End file.
